For contractors there is an eagerness associated with using social media to market their services; however, many of them are still fearful of having a presence online and are unsure of how to utilize the tools effectively.

Any agency or business should, at the very least, be assigning someone to the task of understanding the emerging landscape of social media marketing and advertising (someone more substantial than a college intern).

In the end, when all the glitter shakes to the floor and the party balloons have popped or drifted away, social media will stand as simply another avenue to put a message in front of an audience. The caveat being that the audience gets to interact and shape the message.

The internet as a whole emerged in a similar way during the late 90’s among similar circumstances of excitement and uncertainty. Now it is a mainstay, if not a necessary hub, for all marketing and advertising campaigns. The same will be true for social media in the near future.

This medium is rising fast and gaining a substantial audience in record time. Check out this video for a great overview of statistics regarding "Social Media Revolution 2011" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SuNx0UrnEo

We’re 5 years into the existence of this medium already. Social Media should be a priority for anyone who doesn’t want to continue playing catch up for the next 5 years.

Don’t be intimidated. Be creative. Be informative. Be relevant. Have fun with it!

We talk about it all the time but often our efforts are unfocused and unrealistic. Social media needs to be added to our overall efforts and with clear a propose. However, I think that the reality is that we are slow to adopt social media marketing in part because we are slow to adopt good marketing plans.

I'm not sure that government needs "marketing" but rather feedback and ideas from their "customers". That's the real benefit of social networking for companies I think.

Innovative companies use social networking to get information on how to improve their products and services. That's what I would like to see government do. (My project greencitystreets is a prototype in this direction for public transport.)

I couldn't agree more Andrew. I think one of the roadblocks for Social Media in the Government arena is that these agencies have already invested $ into a website. Said website broadcasts information and provides forms/documents to these agencies' constituents.

Social Media = Collaborative, Transparent, Personal, and unfortunately most Gov. Agencies = none of the above.

In order for agencies to make to most of Social media, there needs to be more than an agency facebook page, or twitter account, the trick would be to integrate social media into an organization that can transform how constituents interact with said agency. Just not sure how to do that.

Thanks for the comment. Here's an interesting blog that I read, Andrea DiMaio, many of his posts focus on the idea that government needs to use the new IT and communications technologies to actually do the real things that government does (in my case, operate public transport better) rather than just adding the technologies for their own sake.